What need you, being come to sense,
But fumble in a greasy till
And add the halfpence to the pence
And prayer to shivering prayer, until
You have dried the marrow from the bone?
For men were born to pray and save:
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet they were of a different kind,
The names that stilled your childish play,
They have gone about the world like wind,
But little time had they to pray
For whom the hangman's rope was spun,
And what, God help us, could they save?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Was it for this the wild geese spread
The grey wing upon every tide;
For this that all that blood was shed,
For this Edward Fitzgerald died,
And Robert Emmet and Wolfe Tone,
All that delirium of the brave?
Romantic Ireland's dead and gone,
It's with O'Leary in the grave.
Yet could we turn the years again,
And call those exiles as they were
In all their loneliness and pain,
You'd cry, 'Some woman's yellow hair
Has maddened every mother's son':
They weighed so lightly what they gave.
But let them be, they're dead and gone,
They're with O'Leary in the grave.
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Comments
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This is simply an amazing poem. I love the whole idea that he presents in the last stanza - that Ireland was like a women that these 'rebels' loved so much that they were willing to lay down their lives for her.
Even in the first stanza where he seems to call out to those of us who do nothing to free our land. It's actually quite humiliating. It’s almost as if we have forced these men to sacrifice themselves through our inaction. Rightly so does he praise those who took up arms for the liberation of their homeland - Edward Fitzgerald (died 1798), Robert Emmet (died 1803) and Theobald Wolfe Tone (died 1798) – and gave their lives to the rebellion. -
For me this is one of Yeats' greatest poems! I adore it and althoug his EASTER1916 poem is a deep and seemingly ironic turaround; I feel his argument of political saturation hereis valid given the historical context.
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